


All or Nothing

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, a little bit stupid as well, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TenToo and Rose try to work out their relationship, but the shadow of a certain Time Lord keeps them from moving on into happiness. </p><p>Andrastegrace's Fic Roulette round one entry: 90's music. Based on the song "All or Nothing".</p>
            </blockquote>





	All or Nothing

A lot had changed in the past month. For starters, he was now one heart and a few more lifetimes short. He now had a legal name that everybody but a select few thought to be his real one – Doctor John Alonso Harkness Noble Smith, after every single brilliant person who had made the body he now had possible and wonderful and what it was. He also had a job, and at _Torchwood_ for that matter. He had to take the bus or a cab to get someplace, had to make do with one time and one universe that was not the one he was used to, and was looking at signing mortgage papers. He also had a girlfriend, who he could kiss in public and eat lunch with at work and do _other things_ withat night in _their_ apartment.

 

A lot stayed the same in the past month. He still remembered _everything_. He could still think like a Time Lord, reason like a Time Lord and speak the same languages he had as a Time Lord. He still bickered with Jackie and hated violence and slept very little and hated pears. He still loved Rose Tyler with the intensity of an entire universe of suns. Rose still loved the Time Lord Doctor more.

 

At first he thought the niggling feeling of _wrong_ was only because she _had_ changed in the time they’d been apart. They’d both changed, and there was going to have to be that slightly awkward time when they figured each other out again, before their lives slipped together as seamlessly and naturally as their fingers did.

 

But that light in her eyes – the burning that had always been just for him, even when he’d been leather-clad and Northern and very, very new to her – never came back. She went through the motions, joked and held his hand and kissed him and slept beside him, curled in the special way they’d developed on long, silent nights in the TARDIS. But she never looked at him as she looked at him in his memories. She never called him Doctor if she could get away with saying no name at all. She never told him she loved him.

 

It didn’t take him long to figure out why. He had the right face, the right voice, the right body. He knew the right things to say and remembered the things she wanted him to. But she remembered, too, and the Doctor had carved too much of himself in her one human heart for her to just accept that he’d left her. And there were times when she’d look at him but her eyes would be distant and he knew it wasn’t _him_ she was searching for in the face he wore.

 

On the one hand he understood. Honestly, he did, and he hurt for her so much because hadn’t the Doctor broken Rose Tyler enough times? On the other hand, every distant look and desperate comparison of something from their now to something from _before_ left him feeling… hollow. He’d honestly thought his brilliant, brilliant Rose had figured it out, had understood that he _was_ the Doctor – completely and entirely and fully. But it didn’t seem like it. And he had to be content with sharing her with himself. (But he wasn’t, he was not okay with that, _he_ was here. Hadn’t she said, the time he’d changed his face, that the _real_ Doctor would not leave her? _He_ was here. He was never going to leave.)

 

Or maybe she had figured it out, and it didn’t make any difference at all.

 

And, oh, he tried so hard to be patient. To be understanding. To pretend he didn’t notice so that they could go on pretending to be _fine fine fine and dandy_. But when he kissed her he saw _her_ , wanted _her_ , needed _her_ – not anybody even remotely different. And slowly the patience began to wear away as the hollowness grew. It was wrong and selfish and he didn’t even deserve to be there, beside her, with one heart that would give out around the same time hers did. He _knew_ all this, but still wanted more. He wanted what she’d given him without doubt, without question, with so much thought and yet so much conviction. ( _I made up my mind a long time ago_.) He wanted all of her – not the little pieces the Time Lord had left behind.

 

The reason it cut him so very deep? (Other than the obvious one that she was the very centre of his universe.)

 

He couldn’t do a single thing about it. There was no clever way out of this. There was nothing to sonic, nothing to zoom to so he could heroically save the day with a paperclip and a wad of gum, nothing to wow her with, nothing that he could fight to get her back, to get her _his_. Because how could you fight something that literally did not exist in the universe you were in? Not even he had those answers. Not even he could play at being a god to change her perspective, her heart.

 

She loved him only because _he’d_ told her to love him. Only because he was the very closest second-best to the man she loved more fiercely than words could say. And one day she would not be able to pretend. One day he’d come home and she would have done what _he_ would have done – what he did with so many of those he’d cared about.

 

She would run away.

 

And he would be left with nothing at all.

 

_(There was the sudden realization that she was not walking silently beside him any more. They had not been holding hands – strange, strange concept to the fingers that had been made especially to fit hers – so he didn’t notice at once. Caught still in the painful view of the future that he knew would come he looked back. She was standing beside the pond, arms huddled around herself, crying. It broke his heart so much that he turned back to her, willing to take her in his arms and accept whatever bits of her she wanted to give him. He’d hurt forever if it meant she’d be okay. He’d accept the inevitable dump – even if it was the clichéd telephone call. He just could not live without her. It was okay it was okay –_

_Her hand moved to around her neck. Her fingers pulled on something. A chain was pulled over her head, a single silver key hanging on the edge. She closed her eyes and sobbed harder. Her hand drew back. Her fingers let go. The key sank beneath the surface of the water._

_She turned to him and her heart was shattered. But she loved him. Him and him him and every other him. Not because she’d been told. Not because of anything other than the fact that she was her. And how dare he ever, ever, ever think otherwise. Her lips parted. “Sorry.”_

_Her fingers curled into his. Perfect fit.)_

**Author's Note:**

> [Part of the Great Fic Dump From Tumblr of 2013]


End file.
